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Madhubani public is now raging in anger, raising anti-slogans for administration and police, claiming that she would have been alive if they invested some efforts

New Delhi, May 30: The gruesome murder case of 12-year-old Nancy Jha in Bihar is horrifying and extremely shameful for the human race. Words are falling short to describe the state in which the little girl was found dead in Madhubani district.

A resident of Mahadevmath in Madhubani district, Nancy was kidnapped, raped, attacked with acid and murdered. The administration and police were reported about the abduction on May 25, after which they took leads from her school principal and began investigating into the case.

Two days later on May 27, Nancy was found, but not alive. Her disfigured and decomposed body was recovered in a deserted farm about 1 km away from her house.

The police are still not able to arrest or identify the culprit whose criminal mindset is beyond imaginable for the humanity.

Madhubani public is now raging in anger, raising anti-slogans for administration and police, claiming that she would have been alive if they invested some efforts.

UPDATE- A local journalist named Raj Kumar Jha reported that two suspects of Nancy murder case- Lalu Jha and Pawan Jha got arrested on Tuesday afternoon.

Social media is flooded with comments from local people who are demanding strict action against the culprits.

If divorce is given to a Muslim girl on WhatsApp, it gets prominent place in the media. It is alleged that people are using modern technological facilities for divorce. In the recent past, advertisements of divorce on postcard and newspapers found an important place in the media but a court in Maharashtra got a married couple separated through video conferencing but this did not catch the attention of national media.

The couple had married under Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 and got separated under the same act. The court arranged hearing through 'Skype' for the wife whereas the husband was present in the court. The couple had filed divorce petition in August 2016. They had love marriage after which they had settled down in Pune. At present, they are living in Singapore. The hearing of the case was scheduled for Saturday. The Husband reached India from Singapore whereas the wife returned to Singapore due to her prior engagements. The advocate of the husband requested the court for arranging video conference. The court accepted the plea and through video conference, passed the orders of separation.

It is reported that the wife is 26 years old and she hails from Amravati district of Maharashtra whereas the husband who is 28 years old belongs to Nagpur of Maharashtra State.

India: 400 Men Cut Off Their Testicles to 'Get Closer to God' Following Advice From 'Guru'

Multi-millionaire religious "guru" Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh persuaded around 400 of his estimated 50 million followers worldwide to cut off their own testicles to "bring them closer to God".

The details of the bizarre incident have only just come to light despite reportedly taking place in 2000 at a hospital run by Ram Rahim in India.

India's Central Bureau of Investigation has reportedly accused Ram Rahim of grievous bodily harm and he is under investigation. He has previously been questioned over the murder of an investigative journalist in 2002 and has also been accused of sexual assault by female followers but has never been charged.

Navkiran Singh, who is the lawyer for Hans Raj Chauhan, the only castration victim so far to come forward, said his client and other victims believed they would become social outcasts if they refused to perform the "operation" demanded of them by Ram Rahim.

"They were told that only those who get castrated will be able to meet God," said Navkiran, in a report in the Daily Mail.

Ram Rahim, 47, dubbed the "guru in bling", is head of the socio-political organisation Dera Sacha Sauda and is estimated to be worth £26m.

The guru stars in a spectacular new movie, Messenger of God, in which he appears to walk on air, tear tree trunks in half and perform other miracles. Though 157,000 people are thought to have attended the film's premiere in Gurgaon, near Delhi, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the revelations have caused sales of tickets for the movie to dwindle dramatically.

Gurus are big business in India, where their endorsements can help political parties get elected, and where millions of people seek spiritual guidance every year. Sathya Sai Baba, who was said to be able to conjure ash from thin air, was worth an estimated US$7bn when he died.

Even after death, some gurus retain a hold over devotees. Ashutosh Maharaj, who was certified deceased by medical examiners last year, has had his body frozen by followers who apparently believe he is merely in a state of deep meditation called "samadhi".

UP Police under Yogi condemned for extending VIP treatment to rapist of Muslim woman

May 31, 2017

In a shocking incident, a video of the rapist of a Muslim woman in Bijnor enjoying VIP treatment inside a police station has now gone viral.

What's even more insensitive is that despite our repeated attempts, the UP Police has chosen not to react to the development.

Janta Ka Reporter on Tuesday had reported how the rapist of Muslim woman inside a moving train was enjoying the VIP hospitality by Yogi Aditynath's police inside a police station.

The rapist, a government railway police (GRP) constable, had raped the victim in a moving train on Tuesday. The rapist had locked the compartment reserved for disabled passengers of the Chandigarh-Lucknow Express.

News video:

According to other reports, the victim was observing Ramadan fast when she was subjected to sexual attack.

The UP Police, which now reports to the BJP government, reacted at snail pace and far from treating the matter with utmost seriousness, decided to extend a VIP treatment to the rapist.

Rifat Jawaid, the editor-in-chief of Janta Ka Reporter, tagged Up Police on Twitter bringing the incident to its attention, but despite his tweet being retweeted more than hundred times, the cops have not bothered to react.

This has prompted many to conclude that the UP Police's biases may stem from the fact that the rape victim in question happens to be a Muslim.

Video:

This has come in sharp contrast to how the cops in Uttar Pradesh reacted in nabbing the criminals who had sexually assaulted two girls in Rampur. The police had also moved in with lightening speed in posting the names of those criminals, all Muslims.

The UP Police's act was widely appreciated.

However, its role in both Bijnor's rape case and the gangrape of four Muslim women on Jewar-Bulandshahr highway has left the force utterly exposed. In the absence of any comments from the police, it's only fair to conclude that the police in Uttar Pradesh under Yogi will act on incidents of rapes only if the victims are not Muslims.

It will be utter travesty of human misery if indeed cops under a new BJP government has also turned communal in its response to victims.

23-YO Woman Gang Raped By Three Men, Her Baby Dies After Being Thrown Out Of Auto In Gurugram

An eight-month-old girl died after she was snatched from her 23-year-old mother’s arms and thrown out of a moving auto in Gurugram by three men, who were making sexual advances at the woman.

This happened around midnight on May 29 but came to light on Monday when the woman filed gang-rape charges against the three men. Police had filed a case of murder and molestation after her first complaint on May 30.

The baby, cops said, died of head injuries. The 23-year-old was forced to get into an auto at that hour because she had a fight with her neighbours and, since her husband was away for work, decided to spend the night at her parents’ place on Khanda road.

In her latest complaint to police, she said, “Within minutes of me taking my seat, they started molesting me. I resisted and screamed and my child started crying. They snatched her and threw her on the road. My wails did not deter them and they raped me and then fled.”

Police said that the woman had first taken a lift from a truck driver, at the village near IMT Manesar where they live. But she got off at Kherki Daula toll plaza, alleging the driver was drunk and had molested her. What was to follow was even worse.

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Pregnant Woman Burnt Alive By Her Family For Marrying Dalit Man In Karnataka

In what appears to be an act of honour killing, a pregnant woman in Karnataka's Bijapur district was burnt alive by her family members for allegedly marrying a Dalit man.

The incident took place in a village called Gundanakala in the Bijapur district. 21-year-old Banu Begum was in love with 24-year-old Sayabanna Sharnappa Konnur, a young man from the same village.

After firm resistance from the girl's parents who refused to accept their relationship, the couple decided to elope to Goa and get married. Banu's family were enraged that they dragged the girl to the local police station and sought a case of POCSO to be filed against Sayabanna.

On Saturday, the duo returned home after she got pregnant, with the hope that they will have to accept their marriage.

However, both the families were unwilling to change their minds and soon got into a fight. Sayabanna was brutally assaulted by the girl's family but he managed to escape with bite marks all over his body but Banu was not lucky.

When Sayabanna returned with police, the family members had set Banu on fire.

Four members including Banu's mother, her sister, brother and brother-in-law have been arrested.

Man lynched for stopping officials taking photos of women defecating in open

Tabeenah Anjum, Jaipur, DH News Service, Jun 17 2017,
A 55-year-old man was beaten to death by municipal employees in Pratpargh district when he reportedly tried to stop them from taking photographs of women defecating in the open.

Zafar Khan, a social worker, was assaulted by five municipal staff, who were doing the rounds in the morning to shame people for open defecation.

The incident took place around 6.30 am in the fields of Bagwasa Kachi Basti (tribal area), a place frequented by locals to defecate.

The victim’s older brother, Noor Mohammad, told DH: “The municipality employees of Pratpargh town scare away women by taking their photographs. When my brother tried to stop them, they attacked him. As soon as we got to know about it, we rushed to the hospital, but doctors said he was brought dead.” Khan was kicked and flogged with a stick.

Mohammad has lodged an FIR against the five attackers at the Pratpargh Kotwali police station. Police filed a murder case against the five employees and the commissioner of Pratpargh municipality, who, an eyewitness said, was present at the spot, but made no attempt to stop his staff from lynching Khan. Pratpargh SP Shivraj Meena said, “A case of murder has been registered, and police is investigating the case.” However, no arrests have been made so far.

Khan’s family members and locals staged a protest outside the mortuary and demanded the arrest of his killers. They also blocked the national highway for several hours.

Khan had submitted a memorandum to the local administration a few days ago, complaining about the unavailability of funds for the construction of toilets in houses under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign.

Pakistan lift their maiden Champions Trophy title after defeating their arch-rivals India by 180 runs at The Oval.

Indian fans burn posters, break TV sets in protest

Indian cricket fans could not swallow their team’s defeat to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final on Sunday as they agitated by burning posters of Indian players and breaking TV sets on city streets across India.

As soon as India lost the match, large protests were witnessed across India, especially in the cities of Kanpur and Haridwar. Fans turned out to be furious and expressed their anger on roads by chanting slogans, burning their players’ effigies and breaking TV sets.

On the other hand, high security was deployed outside the house of former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Ranchi.

Muslim man tied to tree, beaten to death for being in love with Hindu woman

by Sanjoy Dey - Apr 07, 2017

Villagers in Jharkhand's Gumla district tied a 20-year-old Muslim man to a tree and thrashed him for hours for being in love with a Hindu woman, leading to his death, police said on Friday.

The man - identified as Mohammad Shalik, a resident of Raza Colony in Gumla town - was allegedly in a relationship with a Hindu woman of a nearby village, Soso, for more than a year, sources said.

The girl allegedly called the boy to meet her at Gumla town for the Ram Navami procession on Wednesday. Fearing trouble, Shakil initially refused but finally went to meet her on a scooty and dropped her home, police said.

It is then that a group of neighbors saw Shalik and surrounded him, tied him to a tree and assaulted him for hours, the woman was quoted as saying by police. He succumbed to his injuries on Thursday.

Police said they arrested three people and lodged an FIR against unnamed people. "Though investigation is on, we were told by the villagers that the boy had been asked earlier not to meet the girl and never visit the village," said Gumla superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Jha.

The incident comes amid rising communal tensions in the state following a slew of controversial initiatives in neighboring Uttar Pradesh. Activists have cried foul against Jharkhand's decision to create anti-romeo squads and seal illegal slaughterhouses, saying that the moves unfairly targeted the Muslim community.

Earlier this week, a Muslim man was lynched by a group of cow protection vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar when he was transporting cattle. A group of men also forced a couple to shave their heads in Uttar Pradesh, one of a similar string of alleged moral policing incidents.

Indian Hindus regularly make bollywood movies where not only is the Muslim women in love with a hindu boy, but a Muslim women is also used to play a role with a Hindu man for any love stories/scenes. Marriage of hindu men to Muslim women in india is not uncommon because of those Muslims' own ignorance of Islam."And do not marry polytheistic women until they believe. And a believing slave woman is better than a polytheist, even though she might please you. And do not marry polytheistic men [to your women] until they believe. And a believing slave is better than a polytheist, even though he might please you. Those invite [you] to the Fire, but Allah invites to Paradise and to forgiveness, by His permission. And He makes clear His verses to the people that perhaps they may remember." - (Quran 2:221)

On New Year’s Eve, a Midday reporter Shadab Khan caught on camera a crowd of about sixty people surrounding a young girl and her boy-friend at the Gateway of India in Mumbai. The reporter got these pictures from a height -he was atop a police post trying to capture the spirit of the revellers. As the clock struck midnight the screaming girl was pawed and manhandled by the thugs surrounding her and her boy-friend was roughly pushed aside. In the melee her dress was torn and she fell down. One doesn’t know exactly how but the couple managed to extricate themselves from the crowd and run away. No police complaint was filed. Today, the Colaba Police is planning to undertake an investigation into the incident and has taken the pictures from the reporter.

Shadab Khan writes about how shocked he is at the incident and wonders how such a thing could happen in Mumbai. Even today the press is writing about how shocking the whole incident is. That only Delhi is supposedly notorious for this kind of public behavior.

Well, I think the press should wake up and speak to a few ladies who travel by public transport or have been caught in crowds. Only then they can shed the illusion that these things happen only in Delhi. Whether it is Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune or Calcutta, there are always cheap sex crazy elements lying in wait to molest women. Pornography, which is now freely available on the internet has just whetted their appetite.

Personal experiences
I have lived in all the cities mentioned above and have had the bad luck of being pawed in all the cities. True, my experiences in Delhi (I studied there) were the maximum (movie theatre, shop, roads, buses) but I have also been pawed in the Calcutta metro, in a Ganpati Visarjan (holy procession) on Pune’s Laxmi Road and in a crowded kirana (grocery) store in Bangalore! In Mumbai? Just once at a railway station while waiting for a local. In fact these are the only incidents that I remember. I am not even counting the incidents (if you can call them that) when men tried to touch or brushed past in the hope of grabbing a feel. I am not even counting the incidents of the scores of men I have seen exposing themselves at railway stations, bus stations and once even on a hill where I had gone for a walk! And I don’t even wear sleeveless! I am considered a prude when it comes to dress-sense.

The sad truth is that every woman who travels daily by public transport has encountered perverts.

All this often makes me long for a sexually promiscuous society so that these sick men can go and do it with willing women instead of bothering strangers.

Well, these incidents are in the past now. For the past ten years or so I have been moving around in a car or at the worst - in a rickshaw. So I am safe. I avoid crowded places and so do all the women I know.
Wonder why the press doesn’t know it? Surely they have women reporters? Or are we simply being hypocritical?

update: It has also come to light that the girl who was molested was an Indian American girl.

Another shameful incident took place on 26th September in Mumbai: Girls, some of them from Jai Hind College were molested near Wankhede Stadium on Marine Drive in Mumbai in the crowds when our cricket team was returning from the airport in an open bus. This was an open bus which the cricketers rode in and huge crowds thronged the roads on either side. An opportunity that molesters took.

This is the link:
The girls were molested very badly and apparently a lot more girls were molested and seen crying on the side of the road. Groups of men surrounded the girls and did whatever they could.
This sort of thing is a part and parcel of Indian society now and everyone should beware. No Indian city is safe. The police do nothing and give stupid statements like these things did not happen at one time. They always happened in India and always will unless these offenders are put behind bars for at least 10 years. Is that harsh punishment for these molesters? I don’t think so. No girl is safe in crowds in any city in India.

Girl stripped and molested in public in the New Year party at Gateway of India

Jan 3 2007

Where is the safe place for women? Women are not safe even in the presence of more than 1000 people.

The people at the Gateway of India were celebrating the knocks of New Year. At that time, in the presence of more than 1000 people, some pervert-minded revellers stripped and molested a girl and even tore her cloths in public view, as her friend watched helplessly.

A photographer, Shadab Khan, claimed that he took the photo of that incident a temporary watchtower erected by the police. In addition, the next morning these photographs rocked Mumbai as well as nation too.

The mob had even torn off her skirt despite the presence of her male companion. It shows the real mind of people living the society.

Shadab said after showing the photographs that the incident has shaken his faith in the city he has lived in all his life. The couple was there to enjoy people were trying to misbehave with them. I shot that picture.

He recalled that around 70 men who tore apart the woman’s clothes surrounded the couple and her friend tried to protect her but went in vain. The horror was continued for 10 minutes and the woman was screaming for the whole time.

Is this the society and nation we are proud for. This is a big question in the face of the so-called intellectual society that women are not safe even in the presence of more than 1000 people. Mumbai shame on you…

A woman who survived an alleged gang rape and four separate acid attacks has once again been hit by corrosive liquid, Indian police said Sunday.

The 35-year-old mother, who was allegedly gangraped in 2008 over a property dispute, was at a women’s hostel in Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow when a man scaled the walls and poured the chemical onto her.

“She was filling water at the hand pump when the attack took place. The attacker fled from the spot,” Vivek Tripathi, local police chief told AFP.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sustained burn injuries to her face and shoulder and is undergoing treatment at a hospital.

Police have launched a manhunt to identify the assailant, the officer said.

Due to the previous string of attacks, the woman was under round-the-clock police protection, but the armed policeman was barred from entering the women’s hostel.

The woman was allegedly gang-raped and attacked with acid by two men in 2008 over a property dispute.

She has subsequently been attacked twice more by the same men, in 2012 and 2013, in a bid to force her to withdraw the criminal cases against them.

Most recently, the two man allegedly forced her to drink acid while she was traveling on a train with one of her daughters in March this year.

The two men are facing trials over all the attacks, but they were released on bail in April.

Around 300 acid attacks were reported in India in 2015, according to the latest official crime figures, which experts say represent only the tip of the iceberg.

India brought in stringent laws to deal with the acid attacks in 2013 following public outcry over the plight of hundreds of survivors who battle lifelong scars and social stigma.

The country’s top court banned the sale of acid to the public in 2013 to curb such attacks, although the have largely continued unabated.

Most attacks are carried out by men taking revenge for spurned marriage proposals or over property disputes.

Indian Human Trafficker Admits To Killing Over 400 Children In Video Confession

Confesses to selling thousands into child sex slavery and killed those he couldn't sell

By: Jay Greenberg - 29th March 2017

A human trafficker has gone on the record and confessed during a filmed interview to selling thousands of children into child sex slavery and admitted to killing hundreds that he was "unable to sell".

British investigative journalist, Ross Kemp, tracked down and interviewed the child trafficker, who admits that he has lost count of how many young girls he has killed, but it's "somewhere between 400 and 500".

Kemp, an award-winning journalist who's best known for his fearless documentary making, seems to be struggling with his emotions during the interview in which he's sat face-to-face with the man as he admits to killing hundreds of kids.

Speaking about the encounter afterward, Mr. Kemp said he had to fight back the tears and was "shocked" and "horrified" by what the serial child killer told him, saying;

"Interviewing a guy who admits to killing 400 to 500 kids but doesn't know exactly how many - that did make me cry."

During the interview, in which Ross Kemp is sitting just inches away from the trafficker, "Mr. Kahn" reveals that he has "trafficked three or four thousand" young girls, "maybe more'.

Kemp then asks if it's true that he has sold girls as young as nine for sex, to which the man replies, "I've sold girls who are 12".

He then goes on to ask if he ever returns any of the children for any reason, to which he replies, "no".

When he asks if it's true that he kills the children that he can't sell, Kahn replies;

"If they try to run away, or if there's any trouble selling them, they are killed and buried."

Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order giving federal law enforcers extra powers to tackle human traffickers.

Human trafficking and children being sold into Elite pedophile rings have reached epidemic levels in the United States, with residents in Washington D.C. even being told to keep their children "indoors" by police.

Donald Trump vowed to use the 'full force of federal government" to take down child trafficking and pedophilia in the US.

Anis Sheikh Babu Mansuri, 25, was working at his tailoring machine at around 9 pm on Sunday, June 18, night after breaking his Ramzan fast when a police jeep pulled up outside his house. A police officer asked him to step outside. Mansuri, wearing only his nightclothes of a tee-shirt and shorts, complied. The police immediately seized him.
Over the next hour, the police picked up seven others from Mansuri's village, Mohad, in Madhya Pradesh's Burhanpur district.

Mansuri, who has a BSc and a DEd, and works as a tailor in his spare time to fund his education, is the most educated Muslim in the village, said his family and neighbours with a sense of pride.

His friend Subhash Laxman Koli, who also lives in the village and repairs dish antennae, was in the crowd that gathered around Mansuri's house as the young man was arrested. Out of fear, Koli stood silent. After the arrests, however, he decided to go to the police station at Shahpur, the taluka headquarters, along with his father and a friend. The police there asked him his name and why he had come. Koli said he had come to see if Mansuri could be released.
"They asked me, 'A Hindu has become friends with a Muslim?' and hit me twice on the back of my head," Koli said. His right ear still ached, he said, from the blows rained by the Town Inspector of Shahpur Sanjay Pathak and a constable.

At 11.30 pm, they took Koli's phone and dialled 100 with it.

"I was sitting on the side, but I could hear them faintly saying, 'I am from Mohad, some children are fighting in my village'," Koli added. "Then immediately they took three cars and left the station."

The next morning, the police called Koli on his mobile phone and summoned him to the police station.

"When I went there, Yadav sir was writing the report," Koli said, referring to RA Yadav, the investigating officer in the case. "He wrote that some firecrackers had been burst by 15 people. Then, he added that some people raised the slogans of 'Pakistan Zindabad'. He wrote this in front of me."

"You can see from the video cameras [recordings] of Shahpur police station that I was there at this time," he continued. "I did not question him because I was scared he would put some case against me. He added 'people distributed boxes of mithais'. I almost began to laugh because he was adding mirchi-namak to make up this story. Then, he took my signature. I said that I am signing only to say that I have come to see if I can help Anis Mansuri, but I did not read the full report."

The police report charged 15 Muslim men, aged between 17 and 40, with sedition for allegedly raising slogans and bursting firecrackers after the India-Pakistan match.
After the case hit the national headlines, the police removed the sedition charge, saying it would be difficult to prove in court, and replaced it with a charge of disturbing communal harmony which is punishable with five years in prison.

"By making these arrests, we have actually managed to keep the peace in the village," said Sanjay Pathak, Town Inspector of Shahapur taluka, under whose jurisdiction Mohad falls. "If we had not acted like the police in other places, there would have been violence. Would [the media] have questioned me then?"

Speaking to Scroll.in on Friday night, Pathak claimed the police had recovered one gunny sack of burnt firecracker remains from 18 locations in all Muslim-dominated parts of the village. But residents of Mohad's Muslim neighbourhoods, unrelated to the men who have been arrested, said they heard no crackers.

More significantly, Subhash Koli, who was identified as the complainant by Yadav, the investigating officer, in the initial statements made to the media, has publicly contested the police version. He gave interviews to the local Hindi media on Friday and spoke to Scroll.in on Saturday afternoon at the Burhanpur district court.

"I want to speak the truth," he said. "I am a son of Hindustan and I do not want to do any injustice. These days, one lie can destroy the lives of 15 people. And the lives of 15 people can also change with one truth."

On Sunday morning, villagers called this reporter to say Koli had gone missing after the police had summoned him.

When called for a comment, Pathak suggested that this reporter had spoken to a different person altogether.

"Subhash made a statement yesterday in the court (recording his complaint)," Pathak said. "Yesterday he told me, 'Saheb, so many press people are calling me that I have begun to give different answers.' Because he is getting calls from Delhi, Bhopal. After all, he did not do any wrong in making the complaint. But now it is as if all the people of Hindustan feel that he has done wrong in making this complaint. He is being treated as if he has sinned."

However, in the signed affidavit Koli submitted before the court magistrate, Koli says that nobody in the village either raised slogans or distributed sweets during or after the match, that many of the accused in this case were his neighbours and they had been within his sight at the time the firecrackers were set off, and that whoever had burst the firecrackers had done so secretly and then run away immediately from the scene. He categorically calls the police complaint a lie.

Terror in village

Mohad is a mid-sized Muslim-dominated village just off the Maharashtra border. The Muslim families here live in three settlements. Masjid Mohalla, where Mansuri's family lives, is where the police arrived first that night.

When the police were taking Mansuri away, a crowd - both Hindus and Muslims - had gathered around to watch. Sarfaraz Tadvi, who stays in the same neighbourhood, was the only one who objected. He told the police that Mansuri was a hardworking young man who could be seen studying or tailoring at every hour of the day and night, and that he could not possibly be involved in such celebrations. The police, said several witnesses independent of each other, beat him into silence. Then at 12.50 am, they returned and arrested him as well from his house.

"I came running from my namaz when I heard the noise," Mansuri's mother Shahadatbi recalled. "When I asked the police what crime Anis had committed and that if they were going to take him, they should take me as well, they began to abuse me and said even that wish of mine would be fulfilled."
"We did not even know there was such a thing as an India-Pakistan cricket match," said Shahadatbi. "We have a television at our home, but ask any other Muslim in the entire village and they will tell you that all televisions remain shut during Ramzan."

The police came to Javla, also known as Indira Mohalla, after the houses built there under the Indira Awas Yojana for people below the poverty line, on Monday, June 19, morning. Five people were arrested from this neighbourhood of Mohad, which is by far the least prosperous and set a few kilometres apart from the rest of the village, abutting the fields.
"When the police came into the village, we all panicked and grabbed our children and started running away," said Jugdabai Ahmed, whose son Imam Khudabaksh Tadvi is one of those arrested. "My son was holding his one and half year old daughter in his arms when the police chased after him on motorcycles and he fell. If the police chase you, won't anyone run?"

Tadvi's daughter now has a deep scrape on her nose. He is still in jail.

Many men of this mohalla fled across the hills into Maharashtra, fearing arrest. Some, but not all, have slowly begun to return. The women have horrific stories to tell.

"The police came into our village as if there were terrorists here," recalled an irate Madina Tadvi, whose husband's brother Irfan Tadvi was taken. "Only after they took the people from here did they find out their names. The police have corrupted the atmosphere of this village. If they talk so much about respecting Bharat Mata, why don't they start by respecting the real mothers who live in India?"

Sharifa Tadvi, another resident of Indira Mohalla, had gone to pick bananas with her husband Sharif and two young children on Monday, June 19, morning when the police came. They started to run away but the police caught Sharif from behind and beat him.
"I begged the police to let him go, saying that our children and I would starve and die without him," Sharifa said. "They said, go ahead and die, we will bring wood and cremate you."

"My husband is the only one who can earn in this family," she said, with tears in her eyes. "He doesn't even know what cricket is. He works hard every day and comes back every night exhausted. Why would he bother with celebrations?"

Pathak flatly denied all accusations.

"Are we the enemies of Mohad?" he asked. "They are all lying to you. If something had to happen, would it not have happened eight months ago (when he was transferred to Shahpur)?"

Many Muslim residents of Mohad fled in panic after the arrests.

"I was in my field when I saw around 10 to 15 boys running away from the village towards me," said Ajit Allah Baksh Tadvi, a neighbour of Sarfaraz Tadvi's. "I managed to stop four of them and gave them some water."

Residents began to return only on Wednesday, when Pathak held a peace meeting at the village saying that those who had done nothing had nothing to fear and should return.

Always at peace?

The Muslims of Mohad are mostly Tadvi Pathans - Bhils who converted to Islam hundreds of years ago. In Maharashtra, Bhils are on the list of Scheduled Tribes. In Madhya Pradesh, they are on the list of Other Backward Classes. Most of the Muslims arrested are Tadvi Pathans.
A board at the police station at Shahpur specifically lists sensitive Muslim-majority "jhagdalu gaon" [villages prone to arguments or clashes]. Mohad is one of them. There is no equivalent list for quarrelsome Hindu-dominated villages.

This board, Pathak said, was put up before he was posted to Shahpur eight months ago. It must have a result of the number of complaints recorded in the village police complaint book, he said. He claimed to have seized arms from smugglers from Mohad and a neighbouring village and recorded complaints of dacoity and money laundering.
Hindu and Muslim residents of Mohad were very clear that there had never been any communal tension in the village. Muslims celebrate Dussehra, Diwali and Holi with their Hindu neighbours, while the Hindus celebrate Eid with the Muslims. They have also been organising an annual qawwali on every January 15 for more than 100 years, residents said, where the entire village comes together to welcome qawwals from as far as Nagpur and Delhi.

"In 1992, when the rest of country and even Burhanpur was burning with what had happened in Ayodhya, we made sure we kept the peace," said Sheikh Karim Sheikh Mansuri, the elderly father of Sajjad Mansuri, 18, one of the arrested men. "We went to our neighbours and said they must not let this violence enter here. Four years ago, when Hindus put gulal on our mosque, we kept the peace. Even now, when our children have been arrested, we are firm that we must not react."

As recently as 2008, when there were communal riots in Burhanpur, Mohad remained peaceful.

Gulchand Sinh Barne, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and mukhia of the zilla panchayat, who is widely respected for his stature by both Muslims and Hindus in the village, concurred.

"I was very grieved when I heard this news about Mohad," Barne said. "Had I been in the village at the time, we would have come to an understanding, but by the time I returned, the complaints had been filed and the police had already arrested the wrongdoers."

Though Barne was not in the village at the time, he maintained that some incident must indeed have happened to have provoked the arrests.

Koli too says that some firecrackers were set off.

"Yes, I will say that in Mohad, firecrackers were burst," Koli said. "What is true I will tell you. But who burst it, nobody knows. If a single Hindu from our village says that a Muslim shouted 'Pakistan zindabad', then I will say don't even wait to give him a death sentence, shoot him on the spot."

Under the surface, there is a creeping entry of communalisation.

"The Bajrang Dal and RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] came here and made a group with 11 members around a year ago and they are the ones who have begun to stir up trouble," said Baksh. "Until then, there was peace."

Ubaid Sheikh Ahmed, lawyer for 12 of the accused, goes further.
"This is a shadyantara [conspiracy] to bring communalism into all of Madhya Pradesh through Burhanpur before the election in 2018," Ahmed said.

Meanwhile, the older generation of Muslims says that the younger generation is slowly changing and becoming less willing to participate in the festivals of other communities.

"The younger boys are no longer as interested in sharing these traditions," said Imran, who works as a driver, who declined to share his full name. "The older generations still believed in sharing all festivals. But in my generation, people are moving towards pure Islam."

The arrested
There is little that links the arrested men. Mansuri, 25, was highly educated. The oldest, around 40, lived in Javla and is a farm labourer without a television or even a sturdy house.

Sheikh Salim Mansuri, 33, is the older brother of Sajjad, 18, who might be the youngest among those arrested. When the police came to their house at around 1.30 am and did not find his brother, they took Salim and his brothers Arif and Taqdeer into custody instead. When Salim returned home in the morning - his family claims he had gone to the farm that night - he heard what had happened to his brothers and turned himself in at Shahpur at 6.30 am.

"Two police held him up by his shoulders while all the others took turns beating him," recalled Salim, who was at the police station when Sajjad came in. "They demanded that he tell them two or three names of those who had been with him when he burst firecrackers. Finally, I was scared they would kill him, so I just put my hand on my own brother's shoulder and told him to tell the police what they wanted."

The police had discovered firecracker boxes bought from the shop of a Hindu named Anilbhai at the Mansuris' house. The police, Salim claimed, forced Sajjad to confess that he had bought these from the shop of a Muslim named Mahmud. These were crackers they had bought to celebrate their harvest, the family said.

Fifteen Muslim men have been arrested in India for allegedly shouting "anti-India and pro-Pakistan" slogans during the Champions Trophy cricket final.

The men were denied bail in Madhya Pradesh state after appearing in court where they were charged with sedition.

They were arrested after their Hindu neighbours complained that they had burst firecrackers and shouted "pro-Pakistan" slogans during the game.

Pakistan won the final, defeating India by 180 runs.

Sedition is one of the most serious charges under the Indian penal code.
People charged with sedition have to surrender their passports, are not eligible for government jobs, must appear in court as and when required, and spend money on legal fees.

The India Today website quoted police as saying that the men were charged because of the anti-India slogans and not because they were cheering for Pakistan.

This is not the first time Indian Muslims have got into trouble for cheering for the Pakistan cricket team.

In 2014, 66 Muslim students from Indian-administered Kashmir were kicked out of their university in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and charged with disturbing communal harmony.

And in 2016, police were sent into a university in Indian-administered Kashmir after clashes between students from the state and other parts of the country.

Police in central India have arrested 15 Muslim men and charged them with sedition - punishable by life in prison - for celebrating Pakistan's victory over India in the Champions Trophy cricket final.

The men, aged 19 to 35, were arrested in central Madhya Pradesh state's Burhanpur district after locals complained that they shouted pro-Pakistan slogans and lit firecrackers after the match ended on Sunday night.

"We received a complaint from a local Hindu man who accused them of celebrating after India lost the match," Burhanpur police chief Raja Ram Parihar told the AFP news agency.

The accused have also been charged with criminal conspiracy, the officer said, adding the celebrations continued for hours in the sensitive locality. The village where the incident took place has a 60 percent Muslim population.

The men were presented before a court on Tuesday and sent to jail pending trial.

In India, sedition is an offence which may result in the surrender of passports, ineligibility for government jobs, and even life imprisonment.

Around 60 students from India were arrested on sedition charges after they were accused of celebrating Pakistan's victory over India in 2014.

Mistaken as Muslims, 2 Men Thrashed by Cow Vigilantes in Greater Noida

By Shafaque Alam - May 5, 2017
Two persons were attacked by a group of cow vigilantes for transporting cows in Jewar area. The victims were identified as Jabar Singh (35) and Bhoop Singh (45), residents of Sirsa Manjhipur. They were returning with a cow and calf after buying them from Mehndipur village when the cow vigilantes mistook them as Muslims.

The fringe elements [Hindus] attacked the two persons without citing any reason and critically injured them. The two victims cried out that they were Hindus and that they were transporting the cow for dairy business, upon which the vigilantes relented. The accused fled from the spot leaving the victim in a critical condition.

A local resident said that the incident took place on Thursday evening. "They were coming from the Mehndipur village with a cow and calf. They got tired on the way and sat by the trunk of a tree. Some BJP workers and cow vigilantes spotted the two persons and suspected them as Muslims. They called some more persons who attacked them without asking anything," said Muazzam Khan, a local.

Some local people informed police who reached at the spot and rushed the victim to a private hospital. Both the victim received internal injuries and fractures. They were later referred to district hospital in Noida.

Ajay Kumar Sharma, SHO Jewar police station, said that an FIR has been registered against accused Mahesh, Ashish, Ompal and five unnamed persons under Sections 147, 323, 504 and 506 of IPC. "The accused fled from the spot after the incident. We have launched a search to identify and arrest the attackers," he said.

As Modi, Netanyahu bond on a beach, Kerala CM calls Israel terrorist state

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is making waves in Israel. But Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has slammed Modi for trying to build an India-Israel alliance, saying Indians are with Palestine.

July 6, 2017

After what seemed like an amply cheerful three-day visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to go to Germany. As the way Israel and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed PM Modi continues to make headlines and memes, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has slammed Modi.

In a Facebook post, Kerala CM Vijayan said making an anti-terrorism alliance with a country that kills innocents is an illogical move. Vijayan said, India's heart is against the brutality of Israel in Palestine.

Referring to Israel as a country that kills innocent people accusing them of terrorism, Vijayan said that India is against how Israel sabotage Palestine people's fight and defence to live freely in their own soil.

Here is a close translation of his Facebook post:
It is not fun to use a "anti-terrorist" ally with a terrorist state that is killing innocent people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel has been transformed into a strategic partnership with Israel's global advisers Israel and transformed the US-Israeli-India axis into a strategic partnership.

India's mind is against the Israeli outrage that is branded as a threat to the Palestinian people's struggle to survive in their own soil. Zionist aims not only to build the Jews of the Jews but also to completely eliminate Palestine. Recognizing this, the Indian people have always supported Palestine resistance.

India is also the opposite of a non-aligned nation, with the Israeli policy of denying citizenship to the Palestinians and continuing to pursue the racist lounges without considering UN resolutions and internationally. From this point of view, the slogan of the Narendra Modi has changed.

It is because of the mood of the Sangh Parivar that we live in front of the gunfire of the Israeli army, Unity in the Modi-Netanyahu joint statement is unity between the Sangh Parivar and Zionism ideologies. The unity of despotism, hatred and civil liberties became unanimous.

Modi's visit to Israel is a huge celebration in the background of democratic states ignoring the invasion of Israel in close proximity to Israel. The Zionist sympathetic attitude of Narendra Modi without visiting Ramadama, the head of the Palestine Authority, continued to support Israel from indirectly supporting Israeli UN resolutions condemning Israel's human rights violations.

India, living in different religions, can never accept the path of Zionism. The decline of the Zionist nation and cruelty can be seen as a blind way for the RSS's communal agenda to gain acceptability.
Israel has now become the leading nation in the world after India. The profit from arms sales is being used to suppress the Palestinian people. It is a dangerous indication that helplessness for colonizing the occupying forces is a signal. In the name of food and religion, these are the politics of hatred which points to the way out of the country. People have a strong emotion towards this tendency.

While announcing quantum of punishment on a case of mowing down a motorcyclist with a luxury car in 2008, a Delhi judge has made a significant observation. Apparently raising concerns over the current state of affairs, the judge wondered how present-day laws provide more stringent punishment to perpetrators of cattle-related crimes than those who take human lives.

“The sentence for killing cow is five, seven or 14 years in different states, but the sentence for causing the death of a human being through rash or negligent driving is only two years,” additional sessions judge Sanjeev Kumar noted.

Kumar sentenced the son of a Haryana-based industrialist to two years’ imprisonment on Saturday for mowing down a motorcyclist with his BMW car in 2008.

The court on Saturday held the accused, 30-year-old Utsav Bhasin, guilty of rash driving, voluntarily causing hurt on provocation and causing death by negligence, besides announcing a compensation of Rs 10 lakh for the family of the deceased and Rs 2 lakh for the injured.

The convict Bhasin, who was a BBA student, had crushed Anuj Chauhan and his friend, Mrigank Srivastava, under his BMW car at Moolchand in South Delhi on the night of 11 September 2008. While Chauhan died in a city hospital, Srivastava survived the accident.
Bhasin was arrested from ISBT Kashmere Gate while he was fleeing to Chandigarh.

The verdict was passed in May and quantum of punishment was pronounced only on Saturday, Hindustan Times reports. The court also granted statutory bail to Bhasin, enabling him to file an appeal in the high court. The bail bond was fixed at Rs 50,000 with surety of a similar amount.

Bhasin was earlier cleared of culpable homicide, which provides for a maximum jail term of up to 10 years.

The court also stated that the judgment must be sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, so he can consider steps to enhance the punishment prescribed for such offences.

Village Women Unite to Protest Lynching: 'Will Not Accept Body Until You Register FIR, Arrest Killers'

June 30,2017

RANCHI: Women of a small village in the Ramgarh district of Jharkhand came out in support of the grieving and terrified wife and children of the 50 year old driver Alimuddin Ansari who was lynched by a mob on the basis of rumours that he was carrying cow meat in his van. And they did this through direct action.

The police that remained a bystander as has been its wont until the assailants had beaten Ansari to death, brought his body after a postmortem to his village, Bajartand. The women came out and formed the front line as it were, refusing to accept the body in a night long stand off with the cops, demanding the police register an FIR and arrest the guilt first.

The cops, unprepared for this protest, left with the body. They returned again later in the evening, this time pointing out that the state government had promised Rs 2 lakh compensation to Ansari’s widow. We do not want your money, the women said and refused to accept the body. The police went back again.

The cops returned for the third time, this time with some ground work to basically break the resistance. Locals told The Citizen that local leaders were ‘persuaded’ and the family further intimidated. There is no proof, a state activist agreed, “but this is what we know that money too was paid to some of these chaps” The police spoke to the family and the midnight drama, stretching into the early hours of Friday morning, ended with the wife being left with no choice but to accept the body of her husband. The local masjid announced burial immediately after the Friday prayers.

A FIR has been registered. And it names at least 12 men, known to be affiliated to local right wing organisations. A local activist said that the men were known to be from the Bajrang Dal but this could not be independently confirmed by The Citizen. However, some of the names appearing in the FIR are Deepak Mishra, Chotu Verma. Surjit Sonkar, Snatosh Singh, Papoo Yadav and others. No one has been arrested.

Ansari has three young children. He has two brothers. He came from a very poor background, and was a driver trying to eke a living. His village is just about 40 km from Ranchi.

There have been a series of lynchings in Jharkhand that have been barely elicited a response from the Opposition parties in the state or the centre. Details of these incidents have been carried regularly by the media but with little to no response by way of remedial action.

A year ago in March, 2016 two cattle traders were lynched by cow vigilantes, and found hanging in the Balumath forests in Latehar district. The two were 32 year old Mazlum Ansari and like Junaid, just 15 year old Imteyaz Khan. They were on their way to a cattle fair with eight oxen they wanted to sell. They were set upon, beaten and killed. The police claimed then to have arrested five persons, said it was looking for others. But that was the last heard of this brutal killing.

In October 2016 a Muslim youth was picked up from his home in Jamtara district of Jharkhand by the police for reportedly sharing a photograph of slaughtered cow on Whatsapp. 22 year old Minjah Ansari was taken to the Narayanpura police station and tortured according to the family, and when his health deteriorated he was shifted to the hospital where he died. The FIR states that he was beaten in front of his mother, and died because of internal injuries. She tried to intervene and she was pushed out of the police station.

"When police came to my home, my son pleaded innocence but he was dragged to police van and taken to police station. When I came to the police station I saw the police station in-charge and a villager mercilessly beating my son. When I requested the officer not to beat my son, he pounced on me and beat me up, twisted my arms, all my bangles were broken and my cloth were torn, he pushed me out of the station. I helplessly stood outside the station and saw my son being beaten before my eye," said Ajhola Bibi, mother of Minhaj Ansari,in the FIR quoted in the media at the time.

In 2017 the attacks have intensified. Jamshedhpur, the industrial town, was witness to seven lynchings, four of these Muslims in mid-May this year. The rumour that spread like wildife in the villages along the borders of Seraikela-Kharsawan, East Singhbhum and West Singhbhum districts was of gangs trying to snatch children. The villagers were thus instigated into picking up weapons such as sticks and bats, and attacked strangers killing seven in the process, three being non-Muslims

The above photograph is of one of the men Mohammad Naeem pleading with the mob to leave him alone. But they killed him anyway. Like that of Ansari, the driver, whose first photographs posted on Facebook showed him being beaten. But again despite the fact that he was almost inert, the mob of cow vigilantes went on to beat him to death regardless. The state government arrested 18 persons for these crimes.

Less than two weeks later, on May 29, a Muslim man was tied to a tree in Jharkhands Gumla district and beaten to death. His crime: he was in love with a Hindu woman. Mohammad Shalik, a resident of Raza colony in Gumla town went to meet the girl he was involved with on her invitation. He was spotted by neighbours and others, tied to a tree, beaten mercilessly until he died. Three were reportedly arrested for the crime.

On June 27-28 in a village Jharkhands Giridih district, the house of one Usman Ansari was attacked as a dead cow was foud outside. It had little to do with him, but a mob of 200 or more collected, set his house and fire and beat him mercilessly. This was in Beria Hatiatand village in the Deoria area of the district. The mob was pelting stones as well and according to the police, the cops sent to “rescue” Ansari had to open fire.

The women say they are disillusioned with the police and believe the government is in cahoots with cow vigilantes. A mob of 100 people on Thursday thrashed trader Alimuddin, also known as Asgar Ali, and set his car on fire on the suspicion that he was transporting beef – the latest in a string of similar incidents of cow-related violence.

“Mob justice would be meted with mob-justice,” said Mariam Khatun, the wife of the dead trader, as scores of people flooded her modest home to console her. Around her, 70-odd women, many of them associated with local organisations, nodded in agreement.

The village has erupted in anger and grief as many say Muslim men are becoming soft targets in the name of beef trade. Earlier in June, a 200-strong mob thrashed a 55-year-old Muslim dairy owner and set his house ablaze after a cow carcass was found near his home in Giridih.

“We are scared of rising incidents of lynching targeting only Muslim men in the state. These are not accidents but a deliberate act of few groups supported by the administration,” said Mamina Khatun. She said that women were living in fear every day, worried that the male members of the family might not return home.

“If government can’t act, we will pick up arms against them to save our men,” she said.

There is also anger against the administration that is seen as complicit in the violence.

“Why do people of a particular community have so much interest in our eating habit, when we do not peep into their kitchen? Asked Abida Khatun, another resident of the village.

But others advise calm and don’t want communal tensions flaring in the Muslim-majority village of 350 households. Whenever younger men appeared restless, the elders were seen convincing them out to understand the situation. “We are peace-loving people. A mere incident cannot instigate us to take law in hands,” said Bhola Khan, who played a role of mediator between the villagers and the administration.

Sahjad Ahmad, a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, of a neighbouring village said, “Our anger is that police did not take action against the culprit even after passing more than 30 hours. The villagers have simple demand to nab the culprits and punish them.”

Beef-eaters should be ‘hanged in public’ for consuming sacred cows, says Hindu leader

16 Jun, 2017

The leader of an Indian nationalist Hindu organization has stirred up controversy by saying that beef-eaters should be hanged in public. The inflammatory statement has prompted some MPs to demand her arrest.

Sadhvi Saraswati, the leader of the nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) organization, made the comment while speaking at the All India Hindu Convention in Panaji, Goa, on Thursday.

“I would recommend to the government of India that those who consider it a status symbol to eat the meat of one’s own mother should be hanged in public,” Saraswati said, as quoted by the Press Trust of India.

“Then only people will realize that it is our duty to protect the ‘gau mata,’” she said, using a Hindi term which translates to “mother cow."

Cows are considered sacred by Hindus, who make up almost 80 percent of India’s population, according to 2011 census data.

The 22-year-old went on to state that India’s Hindu population is “living under threat,” and that she sees nothing wrong with “picking up arms” to protect the religion.

She also criticized those with Hindu backgrounds who are “in the garb of seculars.”

“These seculars are the first who will be attacked,” she said, as translated by The Indian Express.

Saraswati’s statements have prompted some to call for her arrest, including Goa Congress MP Shantaram Naik.

“This is no freedom of speech. Under appropriate sections of IPC (Indian Penal Code), she would not even get bail and remain behind bars for months. She should be arrested, at the earliest,” he said, as quoted by India Today.

Congress is asking the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the state and Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to condemn Saraswati’s statements, or else “Goa residents will assume the state and union government are encouraging such fringe outfits.”

Naik has also met with the minister for home affairs, Rajnath Singh, requesting that he take action against Saraswati as well.

The statements come amid a surge in so-called “cow vigilantes” in India, who use violent means to prevent people from slaughtering cattle and sometimes kill those who attempt to do so.

In late April, two men suspected of attempting to steal cows for slaughter in India’s northeastern state of Assam were brutally beaten by a mob and later died of their injuries.

Earlier in April, cow vigilantes attacked and killed a person transporting cattle that had reportedly been purchased as milk cows and were not even going to be slaughtered.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on India to prosecute cow vigilantes for carrying out such attacks, noting that Muslims and members of India’s lowest caste, known as ‘untouchables,’ are often the victims.

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'Cow Safer Than a Muslim in India': Shashi Tharoor in Parliament

New Delhi: Stressing on 'growing intolerance' in the country, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said on Tuesday that a cow was safer in India than a Muslim.

Participating in the debate on intolerance in the Lok Sabha, Mr Tharoor said a Bangladeshi friend of his on a visit told him that "Islamic fundamentalists in his country were having a field day attacking India as a place where it is safer to be a cow than a Muslim."

Attacking the Modi government, Mr Tharoor said that it cannot promote "Make in India" abroad while there was still "Hate in India". Mr Tharoor said that the Prime Minister was silent over the issue while his party colleagues are resorting to "political polarisation" in the country.

"They are such explosives who can destroy Indian ideology," he said following it with a Hindi couplet, "Mazhab nahi sikhata aapas mein bair rakhna" (Religion does not teach animosity against each other)

While Mr Tharoor made sharp attacks at the ruling government over 'intolerance', he spared some praise for its leader and said that Narendra Modi was a "different person" before becoming the Prime Minister. He cited how the then Chief Minister of Gujarat had avoided resorting to "divisive politics" unlike any "clever politician" when bombs exploded during his rally in Gandhi Maidan in Bihar in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.

"He (PM Modi) continued his speech peacefully and so no one in the crowd of 3-4 lakh came to know of the blasts that had killed six people. He did not try to reap benefits of divisive politics," Mr Tharoor said.

Mr Tharoor said that India cannot sell itself to the world as a "land of pluralism, tolerance and Gandhianism while encouraging intolerance, communal hatred and minority insecurity within the country."

"But what has happened to Modiji now. Where has he lost is voice. After he became Prime Minister, he has forgotten the policy of taking along everyone. His senior party leaders are using political polarisation but he is silent," Mr Tharoor said.

It Is Safer To Be A Cow Than A Muslim In India, Says Shashi Tharoor In Lok Sabha

01/12/2015

NEW DELHI--In a sharp attack, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor blamed the government for the 'rising intolerance in the country' on Tuesday.

Addressing the Lok Sabha, Tharoor said, "It is safer to be a cow than a Muslim in India." Tharoor said that a Bangladeshi friend told him that fundamentalist leaders in his country attacked India in this fashion.

The Congress MP said that India was built on the premise of respecting diversity, and it is the responsibility of the government to uphold that premise. “Hate at home and Make in India abroad cannot go hand in hand,” he said.

Tharoor also pointed out that foreign publications were talking about growing intolerance in India. "We are shamed with the reputation we gaining abroad."

Tharoor also reminded of the the Kerala House raid that was conducted last month, at a time when African delegation was in India. "What would they have thought about the intolerance in the country," he asked.

Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and reminding of his election promises, Tharoor said, "Has the Prime Minister forgotten that he's a leader and he is supposed to walk with people belonging to all caste, class and religion?"

Tharoor also demanded abolition of death penalty, describing it as an "aberration in a healthy democracy".

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, he said hanging people does not deter crime and there is a lot of subjectivity in application of death penalty. "It (death penalty) is an aberration in a healthy democracy," Tharoor said, adding that instead preventive and reformative measures should be strengthened to prevent crimes.

Contending that death penalty has mostly affected the marginalised people, the Congress leader said the state should not become killer. "We should abolish death penalty to uphold the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi," he said.

According to him, around 70 per cent of the UN member nations have abolished death penalty.

In her genre-bending essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1983), literary theorist and feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak had interpreted the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, especially the colonised women, with an epic sentence: "White men are saving brown women from brown men."

Writing in the context of the British colonisers banning the Hindu practice of Sati, Spivak argued that the western imperative to "reform" the colonised, a project which is never innocent, is produced in order to support western interests. That critical thinking about the "other" tends to articulate its relation to the other within the hegemonic vocabulary.

Borrowing the same theoretical tools from Spivak, it can be easily argued today that, in the context of the brouhaha over triple talaq, brown (mostly Hindu) men are saving brown Muslim women from brown Muslim men.

It's a valid framework given the fact that Project Hindutva, in the many ways it has manifested itself in India, is also a colonial project that seeks to create, by the force of law or otherwise, a certain subject out of every Indian, especially its Muslims.

The marginal issue of instant triple talaq, prevalent, as the statistics suggest, among a miniscule 0.3 per cent of Indian Muslims, is an interesting case study on how this project moves forward. The benign State, with its many institutions including the judiciary, has come to the rescue of brown Muslim women oppressed by their men.

As the benign state and its pet media pats itself on the back for "liberating nine crore Muslim women", please take a moment to think of Muslim women, who have faced the brunt of the same project and then denied justice by the same State.

So, are you an oppressed Muslim woman only when you're divorced? What about the hundreds of them brutalised, raped, and either killed or left to die by the protagonists of the same project? What about the Bilkis Banos, Zakia Jaffris, Kousar Bis, and Ishrat Jahans of the same Muslim world?

The same people who hailed the Supreme Court verdict today as "historic" and a "powerful measure for women empowerment" have blocked, with all their might, any access to justice that the victims and survivors of the so many massacres against Muslims have made in the past few decades.

One of the major markers of those massacres - Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar, Bhagalpur, or elsewhere - was systematic and organised rape and killing of Muslim women in order to humiliate and demoralise Muslim men.

Forget justice. Those women, languishing in the many relief camps all over Gujarat, were greeted with barbs including "child-producing factories" and "hum paanch, hamare pachees" by the same man who has today hailed the instant triple talaq verdict.

One only has to follow the long journey of Zakia Jafri as the 80-year-old woman takes on the might of the same state in seeking justice for the murder of her husband and dozens of others in 2002.

Hegemony, as Spivak saw it, prevents the dominant and the powerful from any scrutiny. The bogey of triple talaq may lead to a more uncomfortable discourse towards Uniform Civil Code. The regime, suspected and feared today, will instead seek to validate itself as the saviour of all Indians, Muslims included.

But when it comes to Uniform Civil Code, a note of caution by the Supreme Court in 1995 deserves a mention: "The desirability of uniform civil code can be hardly doubted but it can concretise only when social climate is properly built by the elite of the society and the statesmen, instead of gaining personal mileage, rise above and awaken the masses to accept the change."

The government can begin to create that climate by making sure not just the divorced, but the raped and the widowed, also get justice.

Tens of thousands of angry followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh — who calls himself the "Guru of Bling" — forced a lockdown in cities in northern India on Friday, after a court convicted the guru of raping two of his followers. Local media report that at least 28 people have died in the unrest.

Protesters set fires and clashed with police and security officers in two states, Haryana and Punjab, after a court in Panchkula announced it had found the guru guilty.

"Followers of the flashy self-styled religious leader warned that his legal day of reckoning would be bloody," NPR's Julie McCarthy reports from New Delhi. After the verdict was announced, Julie says, his supporters "cut a swath of destruction across the city of Panchkula, where a curfew is now imposed. The army is reported to have moved in to take control and dispersed the crowds who had pelted stones and broke barricades."

The violence prompted the Punjab and Haryana High Court to order the seizure of the sect's property, says attorney Navdeep Singh. The group says the court's findings are "unjust."

After hours of clashes between demonstrators and police, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday, "The instances of violence today are deeply distressing. I strongly condemn the violence & urge everyone to maintain peace."

Anticipating a verdict in the case, the guru's followers had streamed into the part of Haryana state where the decision was announced. In an attempt to maintain order, officials sent some 17,000 troops to Panchkula, the Times of India reports.

"Ram Rahim will be sentenced on Monday and was flown out of Panchkula in a government helicopter," NDTV reports.

"Many Indians said they had not heard of Rahim before this week, and the mayhem that's overtaken a city in Haryana took them by surprise," Julie reports. She adds that officials' efforts to prevent a mass demonstration failed: "Train service had been canceled and school and offices shut down. Authorities have been sharply criticized for allowing thousands to mass near the courthouse, and for not sealing off the area."

As they prepared for potential trouble, local and regional officials on Thursday suspended mobile web services for 72 hours in Haryana and Punjab — a move that drew criticism on Friday, as some of those same leaders attempted to use Twitter and other platforms to call for calm.

Adding to the controversy is the fact that the guru is both popular and "politically connected," Julie says, "which critics say allowed him to operate with impunity."

Ram Rahim Singh, 50, is the flamboyant, motorcycle-riding head of Dera Sacha Sauda, a sect that was founded in 1948. The spiritual group is known for giving blood and other charitable acts — but also for producing music and videos featuring Singh, sometimes under nicknames like the "Guru of Bling" or "Messenger of God."

He has led the sect, commonly referred to as Dera, since 1990. The case against him dates back to 2002, when a claim of sexual harassment was lodged. It took years to develop formal charges against the leader, even after two women gave statements under oath in 2009 and 2010.

Along the way, the guru has faced other legal troubles and controversies — as in 2012, when India's Central Bureau of Investigation looked into reports that the guru had ordered 400 of his male followers to be castrated.

And as The Hindu reports, Ram Rahim Singh "also faces allegations of two murders, including that of a journalist, and had also courted controversy for dressing up as Guru Gobind Singh in 2007 leading to widespread protests in Punjab."